Grasping the Gershwin tale is a matter of composure

A well-spoken, pleasant 83-year-old lady named Jenifer Whisper contacted me to say she was a songwriter. I said, “I think that’s a very nice thing.”

A couple of minutes into the conversation, she happened to mention that she received lyrics and music from George Gershwin — personally. That’s interesting mainly because Gershwin died 76 years ago.

Thinking I misunderstood, I asked: “You mean, inspired by him?”

“No, he tells them to me.”

Ahem. Madam, you have my complete attention.

A few weeks later, I pulled up a chair at her table and spelled it out. “Jenifer, when you told me you talk with George Gershwin and other composers, you were talking to a guy who can’t be surprised and is seldom shocked. But are you aware that some folks will think you don’t have both oars in the water?”

Jenifer accepts that with a shrug and tells me she’s had the gift of clairvoyance for 60 years. She’s a Christian and belongs to the Teaching of the Inner Christ church in El Cajon, which teaches the power of meditation. That ability to delve deeply into her mind, she explains, helps her tap her psychic powers.

I ask how she and Mr. Gershwin first met. (If you don’t recognize his name, go on to the sports pages.)

One day in the early ’70s, Jenifer was meditating to deal with some stress in her life when “I heard a knock on the door. I said, ‘Who’s there?’ No answer. I opened the door, and there’s no one there. So I kept on meditating. Then, I heard a voice in my mind say, ‘Hello, Jeny. It’s me, George Gershwin.’

“Oh, sure. George Gershwin, as in ‘Rhapsody in Blue’?”

“That’s right, Jenny.”

“I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I said, ‘Oh, Mr. Gershwin, you’ve made a mistake. You really want my sister, Madeleine. She’s a musician, not me. I know nothing about music except I love it.’ And he said, ‘But you’re the one who is gifted with telepathy. I left the planet when you were 7, but from that time, I was getting you ready to be our medium and song composer on the other side.’ ”

She says Gershwin gave her a new name, Jenifer Whisper, because of her ability to channel whisperings in her ear. She then became a conduit for his new songs, six of them over the years.

Jenifer says Gershwin dictated lyrics and tunes to her through telepathy, then she would write down the words and hum the tune to a pianist friend who would set it to music.

I pry my mind open like an eyelid after an all-night party. I want to be nonjudgmental and fair, which comes down to attitude. A cynic is a person who doesn’t believe, and is nasty about it. A skeptic is one who has doubts, but tries to be open. I try to be the latter — except for Nigerian investment pitches.

Jenifer knows that convincing me is a climb up Mount Whitney, and doesn’t mind my little humor digs that come from a main strand of my DNA. I hope Gershwin also gives me a pass.